Adjunct Faculty
Coordinator of Tutoring Services
Director of The Writing Center
Laurel DiGangi is an Adjunct Professor of Writing. She has taught in the Writing Department since 2008, including classes in fiction and creative nonfiction. She also serves in a staff position as coordinator of tutoring services, managing both The Writing Center and The Math, Science, & Subject Tutoring Center.
Prof. DiGangi’s ultimate goal is to instill within her students a better understanding—if not a love—of the writing process. She discovered her own love of writing later in life, spending the first 15 years of her career as a graphic designer and illustrator in Chicago. She also served on the board of directors and as president of Women in Design/Chicago, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the growth of women in the design profession. She was inspired to pursue her master’s degree in English when an essay she wrote was published in the Chicago Reader, one of the nation’s largest alternative newspapers, with a peak circulation of 138,000. She soon became a regular contributor.
Since then, Prof. DiGangi’s fiction and creative non-fiction have been published in such literary magazines as Denver Quarterly, Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, Under the Gum Tree, Two Hawks Quarterly, SLAB, Ray’s Road Review, Asylum, Cottonwood, and Atlanta Quarterly. An avid film buff, Prof. DiGangi’s original screenplays have been finalists in several competitions, as well as optioned. Her health care journalism has appeared in many print and online magazines published by the John Wayne Cancer Institute, the Providence Health Care System, City of Hope, UCLA, and others. As a former entertainment journalist and film critic for Entertainment Today, she has interviewed dozens of actors, producers, and directors such as Johnny Depp, Robert Duvall, Drew Barrymore, Ridley Scott, Peter Jackson, and Joel and Ethan Coen. She is currently working on several personal and professional writing projects, including a memoir.
MA, English, University of Illinois, Chicago
BA, English, University of Illinois, Chicago (Phi Beta Kappa)